


Til I Hear You Sing

by startwithsparks



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Heartbreak, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startwithsparks/pseuds/startwithsparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phantom of the Opera AU. She gave him his name, and he's answered to it ever since, but who is he under the masks and glamour - a kind benefactor, or the creature that haunts her dreams?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til I Hear You Sing

"Your soul is a beautiful thing, child. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept to-night.”  
\- Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

She woke in a panic, thin sheets sticking to her sweat-damp skin. She'd dreamed that she was blind again, that she was mute, that her legs were lame beneath her. But the firelight still burned softly and she pulled her knees to her chest, feeling over her body, touching her face, murmuring to the darkness to make certain that her voice and ears still worked. Though her heartbeat still raced behind her ribs, the fear that rushed through her body slowly slipped away, and Arya slumped back against the wall. She'd been here so long, and no longer a child, that she thought one day these nightmares would stop. And while they drew away from time to time, like the tide they always rushed back to her again.

She pressed her hands to her face and rubbed her tired eyes. There was little hope that she'd be able to return to sleep, and even without windows to see the early morning sky, she could tell that she only had a few short hours before the rest of Braavos started to wake as well. With a heavy sigh, she shoved the blankets away, the warmth of the fire flickering across her bare skin, and dropped her feet off the side of the bed. The stone felt harsher than usual against her feet, her body still tingling with the ghost of senses stolen, but it was merely another reminder that her body was still whole, still under her own control.

Arya struggled into her clothes in the darkness - not the black and white robes of the order, but a pale linen shirt and heavily patched pants - and took a candle with her as she slipped out of her room. The quiet corridors and endless stairways were always a comfort to her racing mind. It was easy to get lost in them as well, and she'd often found herself in some dank little room that she knew she shouldn't be in. But no one spoke of it, no one so much as murmured that she'd trespassed where she shouldn't be. With sleep still thick in her eyes and her footsteps less than certain, she turned and started down a narrow passageway.

*

Some said that there were certain men picked by the gods for greatness, but in the end no deed could save a man from Death. In the end, the gods were no more powerful than then those they dangled over fate. Even those touched by He of Many Faces could never hope to become masters over Death, only his puppets, moved by his will towards one, final, goal. Even they would eventually succumb to him.

There was never another choice for him. He was born on the heels of darkness, with the heat of fire at his face. He remembered the shadows of his boyhood, playing across warm brick and dancing behind flames. Light was life, he knew, but he'd also smelled the stench of burning flesh and heard the screams of the sacrificed; even light consumed. The shadows may have been his boyhood companions, but the flame drove him to Braavos, to this temple of Death where he now in a small, dark chamber lit with a small flood of candles and the heavy scent of beeswax. He could have any face he wanted to have now, he could forget his own, but there was a part of him that longed to show it once again. The only time he'd ever felt the warmth of someone's touch was behind the visage of some desperate soul who'd longed for relief that only Death could give him.

Even now, as he buried his face in his hands, it wasn't his own flesh he felt, but the face of someone else. Comely as it was, with its gentle eyes and kind smile, it didn't belong to him and memories that were not his own sometimes pressed their way into his mind and invaded the only thing he thought he had left of his own.

He slumped back against his chair and slowly waved a hand towards the candles. The flames stretched and grew, dancing into shapes. Red women twirled and danced in the flame, and yet they all were a pale imitation of what he truly wanted. With another wave, the flames extinguished, casting the room in darkness, with only the thick smoke twisting around him. He drew in a breath, his eyes closed, and let the smoke wrap him protectively. There was a woman, in another life, who told him that the wisps that remained after snuffing out a flame was the breath of the one true god, the if he listened as hard as he could, he could hear whispers in the billows. But all he heard was his name, repeated over and over again, taunting him with a truth that only he knew. As much as it made him ache, he basked in that heady memory, one that he was meant to deny ages ago.

But the smoke dissipated, and the memories slipped away from his as well. They were held by a tenuous string in the first place, and in the dark he had no choice but to face what he'd become instead of what he had been. The past was as dead as those in it, and all of it better left forgotten. The more he resisted letting go of his hold on those things the more pain it caused him to realize that under the masks and glamour he was only pretending. And he would keep pretending because that was what she wanted from him. The darkness suffocated him, and he shoved open the door, torchlight warming the narrow passageway.

*

The corridors beneath the temple were like a labyrinth, leading even lower than the room full of faces, twisting so slow that she could smell the damp scent of seawater wet on the inside walls. She trailed her fingers along the stone, slipping easily along the rivers that bound them to one another. In her other hand, the candle's flame danced back and forth with each step. She may very well have been lost, but one way or another she would either end up in the canals or back in some passageway that was familiar to her. She just kept following the wall at her right hand, the ground slanting down and the abruptly back up under her feet.

The ground had been steadily slanting upwards for the longest time, and she could feel the walls getting dryer and warmer, she had to be nearing the upper levels again. But still the only light was her own, and she knew that she was still much deeper than she should have been. The mystery and forbidden air of it was exhilarating, and filled her with a reckless curiosity. She had felt doors and archways she dared not explore, but some other night she would come with a lamp, and she would shed light on all the secrets the temples hid from her. Even if she had to use another's eyes to do it, she would seek out the shadows and explore them all. She chewed on her lower lip, grinning in excitement and rounded another corner.

"Child," she heard a voice echo softly through the corridor and stopped suddenly, turning to press her back against the wall behind her. She could feel him just out of sight, too far away to touch, but he'd lingered in those dark spaces before. "Why are you up so late, wandering down here in the darkness, when you have work to do in the morning?"

Arya glanced at the shadows the candles cast across the walls, none of which shed even the faintest hint of light on him. The Kindly Man played with shadows the way that others played with glamour or with lies. "Why must lessons wait for the daylight when we are our best at night?" she asked.

He chuckled, low and smooth, and she heard the soft shuffle of shoes against the stone. She turned towards it and held out her candle, the flickering light catching the edge of his cowl for a breath. "Are we?" he asked. "Yet here you are, with your little flame, and all you can see are the walls that surround you. How are you at your best when you don't even know where your target is?"

Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder from behind, his bony touch, the smell of his robes as he leaned over her shoulder and blew out her candle. No longer any use to her, she let it fall and spun around, only to feel the faint brush of air as her moved past her. With no light left in these depths, Arya had to feel him once again, to listen for his breath and the subtle shift of his body. But while she heard one on this side of her, another sound drew her attention in the other direction. She knew the trick, mummers aplenty could throw their voices like this, but he had mastered it in a way that no one else she knew had; just as he'd mastered every other trick. She might have stood to challenge him, but she knew just how much she had left to learn.

She felt his hand slide through her hair, and graze the back of her neck, and quickly she snapped around and grasped his narrow wrist. She heard him laugh - behind her, beside her, above her - and casting it off as a trick of the stone, she pulled herself closer to him. "Teach me," she murmured. "You won't regret it."

*

No matter how terrifying he tried to make himself, she had never shied away from him. She took every challenge and dare he put in front of her as an exciting new opportunity to prove herself to him, to convince him that she belonged there. But he'd never needed to be convinced. He'd plucked her for himself long ago. He knew her worth the moment she stared defiantly towards him, without fear or concern for herself. Her recklessness, her cleverness, enamored him completely. It was she who had cast a spell on him; he'd only showed her down a path. And she came to him, kissed the hideous face of the Wayfarer, and learned his tricks inside and out. Though she still had so much to learn here, she'd become something altogether extraordinary already. In that touch, her hand tight around his emaciated wrist, he could feel all that she was yet to become. More than anything he wanted to draw her further into the darkness and shed this mask...

But he couldn't. He knew what she wanted: another mask, another man; the one she'd been tempted by as a child. That man had no hesitance in showing his affection, in covering her face with kisses and tracing the shape of her body with his hands. She was nearly as captivated by him as he was of her. But beneath the lie, he always knew that it wasn't really him that she wanted, but a dead man who'd stumbled into their temple with a sword wound in his side, and bled violently on the marble until he'd taken the Lorathi's head in hands and filled his mouth with mercy. It was a dead man she wanted, and with great surprise to him, because though he was living and breathing, with blood in his veins and breath in his lungs, he didn't have the charm or the beauty of the man who shared her bed.

He twist his hand around to grasp her arm instead and pulled her closer, feeling her pulse rapid against the space between his thumb and forefinger. "I've never regretted letting you come here," he said, "but these things of the night that you want so badly, are you truly ready to have that kind of blood on your hands?"

"When have I ever stepped back from blood?" she asked, a smile hiding in her voice. "I want it, I want everything you have to show me."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that."

"I am," she said. "I'm just as good as any of the rest and I'll prove it if I need to. Just tell me what to do."

For a moment his thoughts sped from one extreme to the next, a host of responses sweeping across the tip of his tongue before he cast them away. Here was a moment perfect for a confession, the opportunity stretching taut the longer he waited. He bit his tongue and released his grip on her arm, slipping backwards into the darkness again. He could feel something tight twist in his chest, heavy and unforgiving. "Soon," he murmured to her, a flame flickering to life on her neglected candle as he twist and moved further down the opposite passageway.


End file.
